Statin drugs may be over-prescribed
So tell me what is new!
Not only are they over-prescribed, they have heart-risky side effects and many more problems like kidney failure secondary to rhabdomyolysis, just to highlight one (of too many).
What, from this new report, bothers me is that when do you see mainstream media reporting on the history and a wider reference of facts, not excluding natural care to prevent and resolve the problem.
Just who passed a law that allopathy is the last word on health and everyone must take only this brand of poison?
As an aside, the "deficit panel" could do a lot better if they got their heads out of the you know what and moved their brains out of the box.
Alas, when did you hear last that the beginning of milk homogenization was the start of atherosclerosis. Well it was! And it was so because the fat was made so small through this process that it passed directly into the blood.
So if you switched to non-homogenized milk you could be much better off as the traditional naturopaths of the old days and old ways used to tell you. And of course there were eggs and real butter too, but these days they;d like you to believe this is non-sense and these foods will kill you.
Lecithin any one? Good non-soy lecithin reduces that calcium plaque that builds up in your body. Since we can't say it prevents or cures thanks to the PhRMA controlled FDA and now the co-opted FTC, you just have to so some research to find these studies that your doctor won't read, much less know about. Parathyroid hormone and vitamin D play a role.
Then there is magnesium that helps rebalance calcium, and then phosphorus too. These days, thanks to Medicare you cannot get phosphorus levels on your chem panel as some one there decided you do not need that test. But in reality you do so you can see the Ca-P ratio in your blood which should be 10-4. Lots can happen when it isn't!
And just remember all that calcium they push on you to keep your bones strong is often cheap carbonate form that does not absorb too well and leads to calcium build up in tissues and organs.
Calcium, take it in the morning and not with magnesium. Use a high absorption type.
Take your good magnesium at night.
Of course there is more to this equation but I think this will do for starters.
And BTW, that phosphorus level runs about $118 a test depending on where you are and what lab you use.
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Cholesterol-lowering statin medications, miracle drugs for those suffering from heart disease, may be over-prescribed as a preventative measure for healthy adults, a new study said Tuesday.
The study by cardiologists at Johns Hopkins University found that, among healthy adults, only those with measurable buildup of artery-hardening calcium would significantly benefit from the treatment.
"Our results tell us that only those with calcium buildup in their arteries have a clear benefit from statin therapy," the study's lead investigator Michael Blaha said in a statement.
"Those who are otherwise healthy and have no significant calcification should, with their physician, focus on aggressive lifestyle improvements instead of early initiation of statin medications," he added.
The statin class of pharmaceuticals, including the popular cholesterol-lowering drugs Lipitor and Crestor, lowers cholesterol by blocking an enzyme in the liver.
The six-year study found that 75 percent of all heart attacks, strokes or heart-related deaths occurred in the 25 percent of participants who had the highest calcium buildup in their blood vessels.
The 47 percent of participants who had no detectable levels of calcium buildup meanwhile suffered just five percent of heart disease-related events, meaning the statin therapy would have offered little protection.
"It certainly is not the case that all adults should be taking (statin therapy) to prevent heart attack and stroke, because half are at negligible risk of a sudden coronary event in the next five to 10 years," Blaha said.
Roger Blumenthal, another Johns Hopkins researcher who carried out the study, said the drugs "should not be approached like diet and exercise as a broadly based solution for preventing coronary heart disease."
"These are lifelong medications with potential, although rare, side effects, and physicians should only consider their use for those patients at greatest risk, especially those with high coronary calcium scores."
He added that as many as five percent of people on statins develop serious side effects, such as muscle pain, while one in 255 will develop diabetes.
The study of 950 healthy and ethnically diverse men and women was unveiled on Tuesday at an American Heart Association conference in Chicago.
The report is the latest in a series of studies questioning the widespread prescription of preventative heart medication for otherwise healthy adults.
A US meta-analysis of 11 studies published in June had already revealed that statin treatments do not reduce the death rate among patients with high cholesterol but no history of heart disease.
The two studies contrast the results of a 2008 clinical trial known as "JUPITER," which found that a daily does of 20 milligrams of Crestor, a statin treatment marketed by the British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, halved the number of potentially fatal coronary blockages in 18,000 adults.
All of the adults in the JUPITER study had high levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), believed by some to predict coronary disease.
But BlahaCRP, which he said offered no predictive value.
Coronary heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States, responsible for one in five deaths among adults.
from Natural Health News, top articles on statins from 30+ on site
Jun 16, 2010
More than 6 millions adults are prescribed statins by their GPs will be told about five new 'undesirable effects' in leaflets issued with packets of the drugs. These include sleep disturbances, memory loss, sexual dysfunction, ...
Jul 07, 2010
Statins for children 10 to 17 have been FDA approved since 2002. Now Pfizer seeks EU authorization. READ IT HERE FIRST: THE IMPORTANT ISSUES FACING YOU IN HEALTH CARE AT NATURAL HEALTH NEWS DAYS, AND OFTEN WEEKS OR MONTHS, ...
Nov 14, 2008
It's been going this way for a while: even healthy people should be on the cholesterol-reducing drugs known as statins. That, in a nutshell, is the verdict of a study published over the weekend which found that even in people deemed to ...
Feb 04, 2008
UPDATE: It seems always that the statins detractors focus on the depletion of Co Enzyme Q 10 when talking about the harm inflicted by these drugs. I have always contended that, in addition to COQ10,depletion of several B vitamins ...
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